“More?” He kissed the base of my neck.

  “More,” I confirmed.

  His knees bracketed mine as he pushed in behind me and his cock slid along the sensitive skin between my thighs. I shuddered.

  “Can you lean forward, baby,” he whispered, his hand pushing gently on my back.

  I nodded and did what he asked. Moments later, he was sliding inside me.

  I was swollen and sensitive and it was a tight fit. When my butt was nestled into the crook of his hips and he was thick and hard inside me, I let out a low moan. His hands slid up the inside of my thighs and my hips jerked. Then he moaned.

  “Aw, fuck, sugar,” he breathed into my ear as he started to move. His hands found my breasts and gripped them, pinching my nipples between his fingers as he thrust.

  My head fell back against his shoulder, too heavy to hold up as every nerve in my body came alive, prickling with heat. His cock pressed against some point inside me over and over again, making small noises of pleasure burst from my throat. I arched my back, and the sensation magnified.

  “That’s it,” he growled against my throat. “That’s it, baby.”

  One of his hands moved between my legs and I let go over the headboard to put my hand on top of his, our fingers sliding smoothly together around the skin there. I was stretched wide around him and I groaned at the dual feeling of him inside me and slipping through my fingers.

  Titus’s hand slid from under mine, moving forward to play with the bundle of nerves there as I clenched around him. A gush of wetness covered my hand.

  Then his hand was sliding up to my breast to pinch my nipple, almost to the point of pain. I arched against it, not sure if I liked it but also reaching for more.

  Titus let out a huff of breath, and still, he thrust, the sound of us loud and wet and primal.

  His hand gripped my jaw and two salty fingers slid inside my mouth.

  “Suck,” he ordered.

  His other hand moved down.

  I was sucking on his fingers, arching and grunting against him when it washed over me a second time.

  “I love you,” Titus murmured roughly against my shoulder as his thrusts became less precise. “Fuck, I love you.”

  He paused and shuddered.

  My muscles were trembling and as he pulled out, I moaned. Carefully, he helped me down onto the bed on my side, his hands soothing and gentle as they swept down my arms, my belly, my thighs.

  “I’ll be right back,” he murmured.

  I lay there, completely boneless as he padded to the bathroom.

  I’d had sex. Plenty of sex. I’d thought I knew how it all went down, but I hadn’t in a million years imagined what Titus and I had just done.

  “Okay?” Titus murmured, pressing a wet washcloth between my legs.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back.

  He dropped the washcloth on the nightstand and reached out to pull the comforter and sheet down so I could get inside, then he followed me in.

  “You are so gorgeous,” he said quietly, licking the tip of my breast delicately.

  I ran my fingers drowsily through his hair. “That was… not what I was expecting.”

  Titus paused then sucked my nipple into his mouth before letting go with a little pop. “What do you mean?” He went back to it.

  “I—it just wasn’t what I’m used to,” I replied, shuddering as his hand slid up my thigh and his fingers cupped me.

  “How so?” he asked, not bothering to stop what he was doing.

  “I’ve only done it, you know, in the car with you—”

  “Not my finest moment,” he muttered dryly.

  “And then with Caleb—” I expected him to pause again, but he didn’t. “We did it in bed.”

  “We’re in bed,” he pointed out.

  “No, I mean, under the covers. You know, the normal way. With me on my back and him on top.”

  Titus huffed out a breath against my nipple that I felt all the way to my toes.

  “There’s no normal way to have sex, sugar,” he informed me. “Lots of ways to do it.”

  “It was just different than I thought,” I said with a sigh.

  “Better?” he asked softly.

  I looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Are you kidding?”

  Titus laughed.

  “We’re gonna need to get the girls sleepin’ in their own beds again,” he muttered. He scooted down so he was level with my belly. “At least for the few weeks we have before this one arrives.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?” I asked curiously, watching as he smoothed his lips over the rounded curve.

  “Why the hell would it bother me?” he asked, his lips still pressed against my skin.

  “Just, you know, I’m pregnant.”

  “Noticed that. And?”

  “I’m not sexy,” I mumbled.

  Titus’s laugh shook the bed.

  I shushed him.

  “Not sexy?” He hooted, and I shoved at his shoulder, which he ignored.

  He leaned up on an elbow. “Maybe if it wasn’t you,” he said, grinning, tipping his head from side to side. “Can’t think of a single scenario that I wouldn’t find you sexy.”

  “Oh,” I huffed.

  “So, sex with the dead husband,” he said with clearly faked casualness. “Not great, then?”

  “No,” I replied calmly. I didn’t want to think about sex with Caleb, not then, but Titus was quiet and I was afraid that all sorts of terrible scenarios were playing in his head. “It wasn’t horrible,” I murmured, running the tips of my fingers over his ear and down the back of his neck. “He used lubricant, and it was all very…chore-like. Go to bed, take off my underwear, slide up my nightgown, think about what I had to do the next day, and then it was over. Clean up and go to sleep.”

  Titus made a sound deep in his throat. “I hate that for you,” he whispered. “I’m glad that it wasn’t horrible, but it sounds horrible.”

  “It’s over,” I reminded him.

  Titus was quiet for a few moments.

  “You know, I almost went after you,” he finally said, raising his eyes to meet mine. “When I saw which school they enrolled you in, I almost went up there, waited for you to get out so we could take off.”

  Blood rushed to my head, but I knew Titus, and I didn’t let anything but a small smile show in my expression.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked quietly.

  “Came really fuckin’ close,” he said, nodding as he rested his head against my belly. “But there was nowhere for us to go. If I brought you back here, sure as fuck Ephraim would come for you. And I was seventeen, without a high school diploma, there was no way I could support us anywhere else.”

  “It’s good you didn’t,” I replied gently, pressing my finger against his bottom lip. “If you had, we wouldn’t have Ariel or Diana or this one.”

  “Maybe we would’ve anyway,” he whispered roughly. “Maybe they just woulda been mine.”

  I thought about the way Diana ran screaming with glee toward Titus when he walked in the door, even if he’d only been outside for fifteen minutes. The way Ariel curled up against his chest with her blankie while they watched movies. How both girls preferred it when he brushed their teeth at night because he sang some weird teeth-brushing song. How he’d brought home a baby bathtub because he’d seen it at the store and realized we didn’t have one—I’d never had one, I’d just washed the girls in the kitchen sink. I pictured him pulling on the girls’ socks and shoes so they could go outside with him to play and blowing on Diana’s dinner plate so it wouldn’t be too hot when he handed it to her, and carrying them upside down around the house while they howled with laughter.

  I watched as he ran his fingers over my round belly, his head resting against it like it was the most normal thing in the world for him to be there.

  “Aren’t they?” I asked carefully.

  Titus’s eyes closed, and he swallowed hard.

  Then he nodded.

  I gave him a moment.

  “You can’t get rid of us now,” I teased.

  “Thank fuck,” he breathed, his eyes popping back open.

  “I’ve heard you say that before,” I mused. “Who exactly is fuck and why are you thanking them?”

  “Oh, she’s got jokes.” He laughed, his eyes lighting up. His hand went straight for my armpit and I screeched, squirming as I tried to get away from the tickling fingers. The bottom half of me was trapped beneath the blankets and we were both laughing so hard that we barely made any sound before he finally stopped with a sigh.

  “The girls are going to be very annoyed that they missed a tickle fight,” I announced breathlessly. My eyes opened wide. “Shit!”

  Titus whooped in surprise, pointing at me.

  I smacked his finger away. “I forgot my phone on the other bed and your mom said she would call if the girls needed to be picked up, because Ariel—”

  The words weren’t even out of my mouth before he was up off the bed and jogging toward the door.

  “You’re naked,” I reminded him as he went through it.

  I sat up just as he strode back into the room.

  “She texted about ten minutes ago,” he said, tossing the phone onto the bed next to me. “Ariel’s fine but they’re getting tired and Mom doesn’t want to overdo it this first time.”

  “Okay,” I replied, getting to my feet as he reached for his clothes.

  He stopped me as I stepped away from the bed.

  “I love you,” he said, grinning softly.

  “Love you, too.” I tilted my head back so he could kiss me.

  “Get dressed,” he ordered, tapping my butt lightly. “Let’s go get our girls.”

  Less than ten minutes later, we were pulling up to his mom’s house in my car.

  “You’re gonna need somethin’ bigger than this,” he said as he climbed out, hurrying around the hood to open my door.

  “Why? We all fit.”

  “For now,” he said with a shrug.

  I froze. “What do you mean, for now?”

  Heather opened the front door.

  “Have another baby and there won’t be enough seats, sugar,” he said easily, leaning in until our noses were just inches apart as he pushed the door shut behind me.

  My eyes bulged. “Can we get through having this one first before we start talking about more?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Of course,” he murmured; his lips twitched. “Gotta marry you before I start knockin’ ya up.”

  He turned toward the house as the girls came running out the front door.

  “That wasn’t a proposal,” I muttered under my breath.

  I couldn’t even be irritated with him. Not when he dropped into a crouch and opened his arms.

  The girls screamed his name as they came galloping forward and as they reached him, he lifted them into the air and spun them around in a circle, making them squeal with delight.

  It didn’t matter how long we’d been apart or what we’d gone through during those years. It mattered even less that Ariel, Diana, and the new baby didn’t share his blood.

  Because we were here now. Finally. And we were his.

  That was the only thing that mattered.

  Epilogue

  Titus

  Noel swayed from side to side as she cooked dinner. I noticed that she’d been doing it for a while—since I’d gotten home from work that afternoon—and I couldn’t figure it out. So, I was watching her.

  I’d been watching her for days, since her due date had come and gone.

  Her overnight bag was packed. We’d found a car seat for the new baby that was cool as fuck and turned into a goddamn stroller and that was buckled into the car already. My mom had been hanging with the girls more and more, getting them ready in case Noel had to stay overnight at the hospital. If we had to leave in the middle of the night, Bas and Cian were ready to take over Ariel and Diana duty, but any other time, my mom would head straight over to stay with them.

  Everything was set, so now we waited.

  It was fucking torture.

  I was so filled with anxiety every second of every day that I was afraid I was going to have a heart attack or something. I’d actually had to sit down that morning at work because my heart was racing so fast that I got light-headed. Uncle Casper had seen me and laughed his ass off.

  “You good, sugar?” I called, pulling a dress off Diana’s doll before handing it back to her.

  “I’m good,” she replied.

  She didn’t turn to face me and there was something in her voice that I couldn’t pinpoint.

  Slowly rising from my chair, I wandered into the kitchen and wrapped my arms around her, resting my chin on her shoulder.

  “How you doin’, baby?” I asked softly, automatically falling into the same rhythm as her hips moved from side to side.

  “Just tired,” she replied, dropping her head back against my shoulder for a moment before going back to what she was doing.

  She was lying.

  “Noel,” I growled.

  Her stomach shifted beneath my hands and I jolted, my fingers pressing. Every inch I touched was hard as a rock. Then it relaxed again, back to the normal firm I’d grown used to.

  “The fuck was that?” I asked in surprise.

  “Just a contraction,” she replied lightly. “Easy one.”

  “If it’s an easy one, why are you so out of breath?” I asked apprehensively.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Goddamn it,” I muttered, pulling her away from the counter.

  “Titus, I’m not done,” she protested.

  “You’re done.” I led her over to my seat at the table and crouched down. “How long you been havin’ ’em?”

  She just looked at me.

  “How long?”

  “Since this morning,” she confessed quickly. “But they haven’t been that strong and they’ve been pretty far apart since the last hour. I’m sure we still have plenty of time. I’ll just finish dinner and then we can put the girls in bed and—”

  “Fuck,” I breathed, dropping my head.

  As delivery day had gotten closer, I wasn’t the only one whose anxiety had ratcheted up. I’d been keeping an eye on Noel as she grew more and more worried about having to go to the birth center. Ariel was going to freak out and Noel didn’t like any kind of hospital settings—I’d seen her at her last appointment. All she’d had to do was pee in a cup and get her belly measured and she’d still been strung tight as a guitar string the entire time we’d been in the building. She was terrified, but I’d figured that she’d eventually just realize it had to be done and prepare herself.

  She hadn’t.

  Her hands were trembling as she reached out and cupped my cheek in her palm. “We’ve got time,” she whispered, giving me a tight smile.

  “How far apart are we talkin’?” I asked wearily.

  “Five—” She paused, her eyes on me. “Three or four minutes.”

  She was trying to wait until the last possible second to leave, and while I understood it, I was suddenly terrified that she was going to have the baby in the front seat of her car.

  I rose to my feet. “Stay put,” I ordered, kissing her head.

  I found Bas and Cian in the garage.

  “It’s time,” I called, making both of them freeze.

  “Yeah?” Bas asked, his expression morphing into a huge smile.

  “Oh, yeah,” I muttered, rubbing a hand down my face. Fuck.

  Fuck.

  “I’m gonna call the midwife.”

  “Fuck yeah,” Cian muttered, his eyes bright.

  “Bas, you know that thing you ordered?” He nodded. “Better get it.”

  “Oh, motherfuck,” Cian hissed, his smile falling as worry took over.

  The girls were oblivious as I called my mom and the midwife, and Noel called Esther. When that was done, Noel pushed to her feet.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she announced.

  “You think that’s smart?” I asked dubiously, looking down at her hips.

  “He or she is not going to fall out,” she snapped. Her eyes got wide and filled with tears. “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to laugh at the epic mood swing, but I didn’t.

  “No worries,” I assured her, holding her hand as she slowly walked across the kitchen and up the stairs.

  “Where you going?” Ariel called, watching us.

  “Mama’s gonna take a shower,” I replied. “Stay there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Okay,” she said, turning back to what she was doing.

  Her things were in my shower, thank God, because I was pretty sure I would’ve had a stroke if I had to help her over the edge of the tub in the girls’ bathroom. She said the contractions were three minutes apart, and I believed her, but they sure seemed like they were happening faster than that and lasting a fuck of a long time.

  “Don’t know why you need a shower,” I grumbled as I helped her undress. “You had one this mornin’.”

  “And I had you after that,” she informed me breathlessly. “I’m showering.”

  I frowned at her. She raised her eyebrows.

  I helped her into the shower and stood right outside the glass door, keeping an eye in case she needed me.

  Her clothes had been moved into my room and when she pulled a dress out of a drawer a few minutes later, something inside my chest clenched.

  She hadn’t worn a dress in weeks.

  “It’s loose,” she explained, pulling on a little bra with no clasp. Her tits had gotten huge and none of the other ones fit. I fucking loved it. She sat down to put on her panties and I kneeled, helping guide her feet into them. I pulled them up as she rose and reached for the dress. “I don’t want anything tight on me,” she gritted out, pausing for a moment.

  “Baby,” I chastised, helping her with the dress. “You waited too fuckin’ long to tell me.”

  “I know.” She grimaced, her fingers digging into my arm. “I’m sorry.”

  The girls squealed downstairs, and I figured my mom or Esther had arrived.

  “You know how much I love you?” I asked as she walked back into the bathroom.

  I kept close but let her do her thing as she put on deodorant, moisturizer, and pulled her hair into one thick braid.